William Justin Kroll

William Justin Kroll (* November 24, 1889 in Esch- Alzette ( Luxembourg ), † 30 March 1973 in Brussels; actually Guillaume Justin Kroll ) was a Luxembourgian researchers, metallurgist and inventor.

Spent his childhood William Kroll at the blast furnace in the family business. In 1909, he studied in Germany and Engineering, specifically in Berlin- Charlottenburg, where he also received his doctorate. After he had then worked in Germany, Austria and Hungary in various companies where he developed a lead -aluminum alloy, he returned in 1923 after Luxembourg back. There he addressed a own small laboratory, where it almost as a one-man operation working in various fields of metallurgy, in particular, he developed titanium alloys.

Kroll developed in the late 1930s a process for producing titanium by reduction of titanium (IV ) chloride with magnesium, the Kroll process, also called Kroll process. 1938, the case is filed for a patent, the patent was granted in 1940. He used The same reaction principle later also for the production of other metals such as zirconium and hafnium halides difficult to reduce.

In February 1940, when the war in the West threatened, he fled to the United States, where he was received with open arms. He worked first in the Union Carbide and Carbon, then in Oregon in the U.S. Bureau of Mines and at Oregon State University, where he passed on his knowledge and research further led.

He had filed over 50 patents on metal alloys, and was nominated by at least five universities awarded an honorary doctorate. In 1954 he received the James Douglas Gold Medal from the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers.

William Kroll 1961 returned back to Europe, where he lived with his brother near Brussels until his death in 1973. He was later buried in Luxembourg. Through a foundation of Kroll personally WJ Kroll Institute for Extractive Metallurgy was opened at the Colorado School of Mines. Posthumously, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2000.